Marcus Woke Up Gay!
by DangerMouse
Summary: 'This morning he felt gay. Gay as a squirrel in spring. Gay as a pair of skin-tight leather pants. Marcus paused, tilting his head. Did he have a pair of skin-tight leather pants? Were they Ranger regulation? He'd have to check.'


A/N: Written for the "Wake Up Gay!" website, which can be found at http://www.dymphna.net/wakeupgay/ . It pretty much follows a format where a character just wakes up gay one morning and things move on from there. Have fun!

Marcus Woke Up Gay!

By: DangerMouse

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Marcus Cole woke up gay. Sliding out of his bed, he flounced into the bathroom, feeling his full head of hair bounce on his shoulders. He glanced at himself in the mirror, giving quite the roguish grin, running a hand along his neatly trimmed beard. Most mornings, he'd be moping about his dead family, dwell on the fate of all the Mars resistance fighters in the rebellion against President Clark, and stress about the upcoming Shadow War. Not this morning. This morning he felt, well, gay. Gay as a goose. Gay as a squirrel in spring. Gay as a pair of skin-tight leather pants. Marcus paused, tilting his head in a very gay manner. Did he have a pair of skin-tight leather pants? Were they Ranger regulation? He'd have to check. 

After finishing cleaning up, Marcus skipped back into his living area, humming an old song by a woman called Cher he'd heard on a station that played music on the now defunct ISN broadcast frequency. "Do you believe in life after love?" he sang softly as he pulled on his uniform. Primping his nice, shiny, bouncy hair one more time in the mirror, he skipped out of quarters, actually looking forward to the day for once. 

* * * * * * 

Susan Ivanova wasn't in a very good mood. The café where she'd decided to take her lunch that day was bustling with activity, which was doing quite a number on her growing headache. She stared down at the plate of food in front of her, poking at it with a fork, frowning. 

"This is not meat," she muttered, glaring at the offending brown mass before her. 

"Good morning, Sunshine!" came an overly chipper voice behind her. Susan looked up as Marcus pranced around the table and dropped into the chair across from her, grinning from ear to ear like a loon. 

"What's wrong with you?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at him. Marcus chuckled good-naturedly, reaching over and taking a piece of the not-meat off of her plate and popping it into his mouth. 

"Can't I just be ridiculously happy?" he asked her. 

"No." 

Marcus gave a little shake of his head. "Oh, Susie, you shouldn't be so down! Why don't you tell me what's wrong, sweetie?" 

"First of all, don't call me 'Susie,'" Susan began, dropping her fork to the table. "Secondly, you call me 'sweetie' again and I'll rip your lungs out through your throat. Finally, are you on drugs?" 

"Nope! I just woke up feeling so good and free today! Plus, I just had a wonderful workout with my Pike." Marcus replied, leaning back easily in his chair. 

"Pike?" asked Susan. 

"You know," Marcus explained, "my elongating fighting Ranger stick!" 

"Uh huh," came Susan's less than enthused reply. "Are you sure you're not on drugs?" 

"You silly," Marcus said, making a little dismissing motion with his hands. "You still haven't told me why you're such a grumpy-guss." 

The grinding of Susan's teeth could be heard in Down Below. 

"You wanna know what's bugging me?" she growled, gripping the edges of the table so hard her knuckles turned white. "We've broken off from Earth Gov, we're about to enter a war we have very little chance of winning, Mars is getting bombed, and you are acting insane!" 

"Oh, honey, it'll all work out in the end," Marcus said cheerfully. "You keep worrying like that and you'll get wrinkles!" Susan stared open-mouthed as Marcus leapt up from the table, humming some incredibly upbeat song that'd she'd never heard before. "Try to have a super day, okay?" he told her, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek before waving goodbye and bouncing out of the café. 

"I should talk to Stephen about him," she said to herself, then shook her head and went back to poking at what was left of her lunch. 

* * * * * * 

Marcus easily made his way through the crowded Zocalo, wiggling his hips a little as he walked, feel more and more gay as the day wore on. He scanned the crowd, looking for someone with whom he could share his newfound gayness. Suddenly his eyes lighted on a familiar profile sitting all alone at a bar in a small pub. His grin grew wider. 

"Lennier!" he shouted over the hubbub, not noticing the odd looks he was getting from human and alien alike. He squirmed through the crowd, dropping onto a stool next to Lennier. The Minbari looked up and gave Marcus a dignified incline of his head, moving aside some the status reports spread out in front of him to give the Ranger more room. 

"Good afternoon, Marcus," he said. "You're looking well." 

"Thanks for noticing!" came Marcus' delighted reply. "And may I say, your bone is looking quite pointy today!" Out of reflex, Lennier reached up a hand to brush along the bone structure on the back on his head, then dropped his hand back down to his lap. 

"Yes..." he began slowly. "Thank you." He looked Marcus up and down as the Englishman called for the barkeep. "And if _I_ may say, something looks different about you," Lennier said, gazing at the Ranger. 

"A Cosmopolitan, if you please," he told the barkeep, who gave him a strange look, but went to fix his drink anyway. "Sorry, what was that?" Marcus asked Lennier. 

"I said you look different today, but I can't seem to figure out exactly what it is," Lennier repeated. 

"Oh! That!" Marcus said, laughing a little. "You see, this morning, I woke up gay!" 

"Gay?" asked Lennier, tilting his head to the side, trying to remember his Earth Standard. "Ah, yes," he said in sudden understanding. "Cheerful, happy, light-hearted, jovial, joyous." 

"Well, that, too." Marcus said, accepting his brightly colored drink from the bartender and taking a sip. 

"There's another definition?" Lennier asked, looking cutely perplexed. Human language was so complicated! 

"Oh, yes, darling," Marcus replied, twirling around the little umbrella that came with his drink. "The other has to do with unconventional human mating practices." 

"I've never heard that term used in that way before," Lennier said, frowning. "Although, I am quite interested in the behaviors of other races. Perhaps you could help me understand this, 'waking up gay' a little better," he said, putting his work back into his satchel. 

"Honey, I thought you would never ask!" Marcus said in a near-squeal, gulping down the rest of his drink and pulling the Minbari to his feet. 

"My quarters, then?" Lennier offered. 

"I've always wanted to try it at a forty-five degree angle," Marcus said by way of agreement, referring to the odd positioning of Minbari beds. Linking arms with Lennier, the two quickly walked away from the bar, heading towards Green Sector, Marcus happily singing the chorus to "I'm Walking On Sunshine," as they went. 

The End 

A/N 2: Heh. It's over, thank Valen. Review if you please (heck, if you can, given how ff.net has been lately). Thanks for reading!


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